Moment cops dig up Channel migrant dinghies hidden deep under French beach in blow to smugglers
CHANNEL migrant smugglers are hiding boats deep under French beaches, police have revealed.
A haul of nautical equipment was found by officers buried along the beach at the resort of Wimereux.
4
4
4
The find included an inflatable dinghy, an outboard motor, lifejackets and oars.
The gangs are stowing their boats underground at night and directing migrants to dig them up, inflate them and set off on crossings.
A French officer told The Sun: 'The equipment was all neatly packaged and ready for use when the migrants arrived.
'This follows lots of cars being driven by the smugglers being intercepted, so that the boats can be confiscated.
'They now seem to be hiding the boats late at night, leaving them there for a while, and then telling their clients where to find them.'
Migrants are paying up to £1,300 for a perilous passage to Britain on the dug-up boats.
They can be packed with 80 people — but are designed to carry 20.
Pictures taken by Calais police show a French officer using a shovel to dig up a boat from the sands at Wimereux last week.
Huge numbers of migrants are now reaching England's south coast, lured by the promise of free hotels, healthcare and little prospect of being deported.
A record 1,194 arrived on a single day last month while French officers stopped just 184 out of 1,378.
Starmer 'loses control' as over 1,000 migrants cross Channel in biggest daily total of 2025 – as French cops watch on
The total figure for 2025 is now close to 15,000, the highest figure recorded in the first five months of a year.
The 42 per cent increase has heaped pressure on Sir Keir Starmer 's Labour government, whose pledge to smash smuggling gangs has failed to deliver results.
Figures also show French police have intercepted just 38 per cent of migrants in small boats this year.
That's down from 45 per cent in 2024, despite a £480million UK handout for extra officers and surveillance equipment on beaches.
In the year to April, there were 33 boats with more than 80 people on board, compared with 11 in 2024 and one in 2023, figures from French and UK Home Office show.
The Sun revealed yesterday that .
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Times
4 hours ago
- Times
French police watch as migrants board dinghies bound for the UK
French police shrugged and claimed that 'it's difficult' as they watched migrants boarding small boats to cross the Channel. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, reporters witnessed dozens of migrants, including children, wading out and boarding a dinghy already loaded with people after coming from an inland waterway. Also watching from the beach in Gravelines, near Calais, were ten French police wearing riot helmets and shields, who were filmed standing by and not intervening. When asked by Sky News why they did nothing, one officer said: 'It's for their safety. There are children there. We're not going to throw grenades at them. It's inhumane. But it's sad.' Another shrugged and told The Sun: 'It's difficult.' It is not the first time British media have captured French police standing by while small boats head for the UK, as the government continues to push for a change to French rules. Once a boat is afloat in the water, it is not within the powers of the gendarmerie to intercept it and bring it back to shore, even if it is safe to do so. In February Bruno Retailleau, the French interior minister, said that he wanted to give the gendarmerie new powers that would allow them to intercept boats within 300m of the coast. Retailleau also said that he hoped to restore the offence of an 'illegal stay' in France, which would allow police to arrest migrants and smugglers before they attempt a crossing. At present, migrants are only considered to have committed an offence when they launch the boat. The Home Office said earlier this month that it was still 'urging the French to make the necessary changes to their operational policy so their maritime forces can intervene in shallow waters as soon as possible'. The French have instead begun a review into 'new operational tactics', although it is unclear what the outcome will be. French police policy is only to intervene if there are enough officers present to safely control the situation.
The Sun
7 hours ago
- The Sun
French cops shrug & claim ‘it's difficult' as they stand & watch migrant family almost drown in bid to board small boat
A FAMILY almost drowned today as they struggled to board a migrant boat — while ten French cops watched from the shore and shrugged: 'It's difficult.'. The mum, dad and young children were among a group of asylum seekers who tried but failed to wade out to the dinghy in time. 5 5 5 Fighting their way through currents, they returned in silence to the beach in Gravelines, around 15 miles east of Calais. The family, believed to be from Eritrea, finally recovered enough to declare they would try again to clamber on to the estimated £1,200-a-spot 'taxi' to Britain. Just feet away were the cops, watching with binoculars. They wore riot helmets and some carried shields and pepper spray. Asked why they would not intervene when it was clearly so perilous, one officer simply told The Sun: 'It's difficult.' The boat had been launched just before 5am further up the coast, and arrived to pick up the migrants. A waiting crowd then ran out from the sand dunes. French law enforcement have long said it is too risky to act once the boat is in the water — meaning the officers merely watched as the danger unfolded before missing the chance to arrest one of the smugglers. The Sun saw the boat turn up. First a large group of men scrambled aboard, followed by women and families with children. One man appeared barely able to keep his head above water, as he desperately reached from the sea towards the dinghy. Hull residents react to migrants living in iconic hotel Others held on to each other as they fought to keep their kids out of the surf. One cop kept an eye on the inflatable dinghy while four others stood chatting behind him. Another began filming the incident on his phone, while a pal inhaled from a vape. At one stage it appeared the boat was overloaded, with its engine either broken or not powerful enough. But it eventually set off, leaving a group of around ten people without a place. It momentarily paused, giving the desperate migrants a glimmer of hope, but by then the water was already too deep. MAKESHIFT CAMP A suspected smuggler who had steered the boat leapt out and made it to shore — leaving the passengers to negotiate the treacherous crossing alone. He took the group who had missed out back to their makeshift camp, but the police had already left the scene. He became aggressive when approached by The Sun. The family who came close to drowning stayed silent when asked how they were and why they were prepared to take young children on the crossing. They also did not respond when asked if they realised how dangerous the crossing was. But asked if they would try again, a boy believed to be eight or under heartbreakingly admitted 'Yes'. 5 5 Meanwhile another small boat was spotted setting off further down the coast, trailed by a French warship. The two dinghies carried an estimated total of 150 migrants. Photographs from Dover later showed many in life jackets being brought ashore after being intercepted by a UK Border Force patrol. It is unclear if these were the same migrants we saw, or others who set off elsewhere from the France. More than 15,000 people have illegally crossed the Channel this year, figures compiled by the Tories showed. This breaks last year's record of 13,489 arrivals in the first six months. There have also been ten migrant deaths in the Channel this year. Britain is paying France £476million for a deal which is supposed to see border commanders in Calais prevent crossings. But police routinely refuse to do anything once migrants are in the sea. The Sun on Sunday last week told how French police union boss Fabien Vanhemelryck had been branded a hypocrite. 'HYPOCRITE' UNION BOSS It emerged he had called migrants 'scum' and a 'pain' — yet was leading the charge against officers having to intervene. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp MP slammed a 'total loss of border control'. He added: '2025 is the worst year ever for small boat crossings so far. While traffickers and criminal gangs rake in millions, Labour Ministers stand in Westminster rehearsing soundbites.' The Home Office said: 'We have returned nearly 30,000 people with no right to be here and have driven up illegal working arrests by 42 per cent. 'We know more needs to be done with the French to build upon the 10,000 crossing attempts that we have stopped this year, and we are strengthening our cooperation to do this.' They added of the Tory plan to process asylum seekers in a third country: 'The Rwanda plan was not a deterrent. It did not lead to one person being forcibly removed and cost the taxpayer £700million.'
BBC News
7 hours ago
- BBC News
French antiques fraudsters found guilty of Versailles chair scam
Two French antiques experts have been convicted of forging historic chairs that they claimed had once belonged to French royals such as Marie "Bill" Pallot and Bruno Desnoues were given four months behind bars as well as longer suspended sentences for selling a number of fake 18th Century chairs to collectors including the Palace of Versailles and a member of the Qatari royal both have already served four months in pre-trial detention, they will not return to defendant, Laurent Kraemer, who - along with his gallery - was accused of failing to adequately check the chairs' authenticity before selling them on, were acquitted of deception by gross negligence. Wednesday's judgement was the culmination of a nine-year investigation that rocked the French antiques a court in Pontoise, north of Paris, the judge also handed out hefty fines to Pallot and Desnoues of €200,000 (£169,500) and €100,000 to his sentence, Pallot said it was "a little harsh financially", but he was glad that his Paris apartment would not be seized, according to AFP news the trial, the prosecution had argued that Laurent Kraemer and his gallery in Paris were at fault for failing to sufficiently check the authenticity of the items they bought, before selling them on to buyers such as Qatari prince Mohammed bin Hamad Al Thani, who bought two chairs said to have belonged to Marie Antoinette for € on Wednesday, Mr Kraemer and the gallery were acquitted. They always denied knowing about the a comment sent to the BBC, his lawyers said the verdict "demonstrated the innocence that the Kraemer gallery has been claiming since day one of this case"."The gallery was the victim of counterfeiters; it didn't know the furniture was fake, and it couldn't have detected it, as the judgment indicates," Martin Reynaud and Mauricia Courrégé said."For almost 10 years, our clients have been wrongly accused. They have waited patiently for the truth to appear. It is now done, and it is a great relief for them to see their innocence recognized today," they added. At the height of his career, Pallot was considered the top scholar on French 18th-Century chairs, having written the authoritative book on the was also a lecturer at the prestigious Sorbonne University in Paris, with access to Versailles Palace's historical records, including inventories of royal furniture which had existed at the palace in the 18th was able to pinpoint which chairs were unaccounted for in collections and then make replicas with the help of Desnoues, an award-winning sculptor and cabinetmaker who was employed as the main furniture restorer for Versailles."I was the head and Desnoues was the hands," Pallot told the court during the trial in March."It went like a breeze," he added. "Everything was fake but the money." Prosecutor Pascal Rayer said in his closing arguments at the trial that the case shone a "rare and remarkable spotlight on the market for historical furniture, bringing to light a world that has been stamped with confidentiality and discretion."He said it revealed the flaws of the market and "the conflicts of interest inherent in its structure, particularly where experts such as Bill Pallot, and his accomplice woodcarver Desnoues, are also merchants, undisclosed to the buyer".Mr Rayer said the case had "resulted in the disruption of an entire marketplace, thereby highlighting the need for more robust regulation of the art market to achieve transparency and fairness of transactions".Other cases that have emerged from the murky world of antiques dealings in France in the past decade include that of the late Jean Lupu, who was also accused of selling fake royal furniture of the 17th and 18th Centuries to galleries around the world. He died in 2023 before he was due to appear in court.
